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Iris’ ability to read other peoples inner thoughts and feelings seems like a an impossible paradox considering that one of her key “handicaps” as an autistic is that she does not experience emotions herself. But this apparent paradox is resolved upon closer reflection. Among “normal” people, (also called the neurotypical), interaction, such as conversation, is accompanied by subtle automatic emotional cues given off and picked up almost subconsciously. Since this subtle exchange is happening for the most part below the level of articulate awareness, it’s more like feelings given off and picked up rather than words. However, the fact that the appropriate feelings are picked up means that there is actual information being transferred, in other words each person is learns the other person’s feelings just as if they were expressed in words. From a communications engineering perspective this is not so different from reading each others’ minds. Now, in the case of Iris, the reason she can’t interact in this fashion is not because she can’t pick up the other person’s emotions, but because she doesn’t have emotions of her own that are automatically given off in response. Instead, when she picks up these emotional cues she has to categorize them, put names to them and store them in her memory banks for use in her “acting normal” behavior lists. In other words, what she does is read the other person’s feelings and translates them into words. I believe it is this skill, which she developed in order to “be ordinary”, that enables Iris to “read people’s minds”. And it is this that helps her see what is actually happening in communication among people.

Here is Iris, the lady in red in front of the white cabinet, holding forth on the art of communication.